Hello,
Thank you for creating this topic and then bumping it – reading the thread prompted me to think some thoughts I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I’m very glad that I did. So, thanks!
I have some suggestions for the feature request. Sorry in advance if I haven’t properly understood what you were suggesting.
1 – Suggestion to simplify the wording of the feature request
I think the mention of set theory and hypernymy makes the suggestion sound unnecessarily technical and complicated. As I understand it, you are proposing a plugin to grant the ability to create and manipulate hierarchical relationships between searchable terms. If you agree with me that this is accurate, and more likely to be understood by others, then you might consider renaming the thread as something like: “plugin to represent conceptual hierarchies among search terms”
2 – Suggestion to broaden the use of the function beyond being restricted to tags
I see no good reason to limit the proposed functionality to tags. I think the functionality should work globally across all search terms, with users given the option to apply it to tags. So, if I search “religion”, the plugin will offer to return files tagged with ‘Islam’, and also files containing the word ‘Islam’. (Perhaps I could configure the plugin so that it only looks at tags – though I don’t see why anyone would want that).
As an example of why it’d be better not to restrict the functionality to tags: you might have some notes that mention Islam, but that are not tagged with Islam. If the plugin works globally, you’ll be able to build connections among those notes without having to go back and add that tag.
3 – Suggestion to broaden the range of relationships beyond just the generic-specific (hypernym-hyponym)
I see no need to restrict the hierarchical relationships to hypernym-hyponym relations (e.g., religion-Islam); you might want to represent other hierarchical relations, such as the relation of being a part of a whole (e.g., religion is part of culture, and of society, and of identity). Thus, I think the plugin should offer the function of marking a search term as either the parent or the child of another term, with the option to specify the nature of that relationship if needed. Perhaps there could also be an option to mark two terms as siblings – this could be useful if you wanted to mark two terms as being connected, without one being the parent of the other, and without having to spell out the nature of the connection (for example, suppose a detective has an intuitive sense that there is a connection between ‘mysterious substance oozing from the victim’s purse’ and ‘something off about the foreman’s alibi’; in that case, while it would be logical to create a parent term to cover them both – ‘strange aspects of the grizzly murders at the docks that seem connected but not in a way I know how to articulate’ – it might not be helpful or desirable). There could also be a third type of connection – cousin – which would occur if two terms share the same parent, but do not share the same type of relation to that parent. So, ‘Islam’ and ‘Christianity’ would be siblings, because they would share the same relationship (‘type-of’) with their parent, ‘religion’. On the other hand, ‘sacrificial ritual’ would also have ‘religion’ as its parent, but with a ‘part-of’ relationship, rather than a ‘type-of’ relationship; thus, ‘sacrificial ritual’ would be a cousin of ‘Islam’ and ‘Christianity’.
This is sounding a bit complicated. But, the core of what I’m suggesting is the ability to specify either a parent-child relation between search terms, or a sibling-sibling relation between them, and the ability to add a label for the nature of the connection (e.g., type-of, part-of). Thus, when I search “religion”, the plugin will return some results marked as “types of” religion (e.g., Islam, Christianity), and others marked as “parts of” religion (sacrificial rituals, prayer, Christmas); and others marked as “is part of” (e.g., culture, society, identity).
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